Team:KU Leuven

Aphids, those pesky little green plant-sucking bugs, can pose serious threats to a farmer's proceeds. Not only is physical damage to the crops caused by the sucking a problem, but aphids also transmit harmful viruses to the plants. The magnitude of crop loss for the farmers is difficult to quantify as it varies with aphid species, crop species, location, year and many other factors, but it can run in the millions. Farmers try to control the aphid infestation with the use of insecticides but this is ineffective and contested. Aphids become resistant to insecticides quite rapidly and insecticides also have a negative effect on their natural predators. That is why we, the KU Leuven iGEM 2013 team, decided to do something about this in a sustainable way by using an insecticide-free controlling mechanism. With E.coligy: Plants with BanAphids we will teach E.coli cells to hack into insects signaling systems to drive off the aphids and attract their natural predators, such as the ladybug.